Wednesday, December 27, 2017

When Everything Gets Remastered, What Actually Matters?

It's time to face a hard truth: a lot of our favorite games
have aged like mayonnaise. Hell, the first two

years of the PS1 are an example
of this. Games with outdated controls, ugly graphics, and other relics often
necessitate these games being remade to justify them being playable after their
console has been rendered obsolete. It may seem like a hypocritical statement
by me, a guy who actively avoids most remakes, but in some cases a game getting
a fresh coat of paint could be a great thing. One of my favorite games a few
years ago was Wayforward's remake of the classic NES game Ducktales. This year,
Lizardcube's breathtaking re-imagining of Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap holds
that spot and I'm not alone in loving that game. The issue with this trend of
spitting out remasters and remakes comes up with the glut of games that got the
treatment only a few years after their initial release.

I knew something was fishy when I saw remakes of Deadpool
and DmC: Devil May Cry. Both were released initially in 2013 and saw a
re-release in 2015. The dust from the fanboy outrage that we saw from fanboys
yelling about Ninja Theory's design decisions regarding the latter's main
characters hadn't even settled and the game was getting reissued. That makes no
sense to me, but I'm not the decision maker with these publishers and it is
abundantly apparent that a slight resolution update is enough for some gamers
to give Activision, Capcom, and other publishers top dollar for the same game
twice. It's pretty similar to what happens with yearly sports game releases,
where we get a minor update and gamers flock to purchase essentially the same
game for full retail price every year.

While I'm very much on team "Stop selling us the same
games over and over!" I must admit I've fallen for it. I bought the Zone
of the Enders HD Collection and even covered it on this site. I was
disappointed with the result, because there was nothing special there. I am
excited about getting a copy of the HD remaster of Okami and the complete
remake of Shadow of the Colossus has me over the moon with the possibilities of
the reworked controller scheme. The thing with the latter of those is that it
isn't the same game with a fresh coat of gloss; it's allegedly an all-new
experience. I hope I don't get scammed, but I want this in my hands.

I'm confident that Sony won't push out a subpar remake of
one of it's most critically acclaimed first party releases ever, because to be
fair, they aren't Activision, Konami, or Capcom. Okami might be the only time
Capcom doesn't mess something like this up, as they're about to push the first
three

Devil May Cry games out on us again along with a third Mega Man Legacy
collection. Konami basically just throws Metal Gear Solid games at us with
little actual care since they're a joke now. I just heard that Atlus is readying
a remake of its 2011 puzzle game, Catherine. Yeah, we're definitely living in a
world where the phrase "everything old is new again" is very true,
for better or worse.